A prime example of entrepreneurial spirit, Susie Schmitt Hanson was a pioneer for Minnesota women in business. As the owner of one of Waconia's longest-running businesses, she remains a prominent figure in the history of that town.

Carver County made its mark on aviation history thanks to local aviation pioneer Elmer Sell. Owner of the first airplane in Carver County, Sell founded Sell Airfield and had a flying career spanning four decades.

As Minnesota's first Farmer-Labor Party governor, Floyd B. Olson pursued an activist agenda aimed at easing the impact of the Great Depression. During his six years in office, from 1931 to 1936, he became a hero to the state's working people for strongly defending their economic interests.

Following the death of her husband and their only child, Julia Bullard Nelson of Red Wing, Minnesota headed south to Texas in 1869 to teach African Americans in U.S. government-backed Freedmen's Bureau schools. Nelson spent the summers of the 1870s and 1880s in Minnesota, where she emerged as a state and national leader in the movement for women's suffrage and the temperance campaign against alcohol use.

Cheese making in Minnesota took a backseat to milk and butter production during the nineteenth century. In the early 1900s, Arthur Parkin of Pine Island changed that picture.

When Leonard August Rosing became chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party in 1896, he had his work cut out for him: Republicans had controlled the governorship since before the Civil War. But Rosing was successful in unseating Republicans and getting Democrat John Lind elected governor in 1898.

Wanda Gág was determined to be an artist from an early age, and ultimately she succeeded. Her talent steered her through family hardship and hesitant early artistic efforts until she created Millions of Cats, her 1928 children's book. It has never been out of print.

Roy W. Meyer's studies of Dakota people and the US government policies that affect them brought about thoughtful public conversation during the late 1960s and 1970s, a time of social turmoil in the country.

Chester Adgate Congdon accrued a fortune working as a lawyer for the Oliver Iron Mining Company and through investments in the Mesabi Iron Range. He also served as a Minnesota State Representative from 1909 to 1913.

Frank Higgins, the original lumberjack sky pilot, ministered to the souls of lumberjacks across northern Minnesota and the United States. For decades he traveled among the frozen logging camps of Minnesota with his trademark pack of Bibles, hymnals, and Christian literature strapped to his back.